Love for Little Lauren
With Shawna’s permission, myself and Alyssa (good friends and fellow cancer moms) have started this campaign for Lauren. Per Shawna’s recent update below and Lauren’s relapse they will be incurring a lot of expenses especially with travel to/from Philadelphia. If you feel so inclined please donate but as always please keep sweet Lauren in your thoughts and prayers. We love you Lauren! You’ve got this ❤️
Shawnas update 1/25/2020:
Hello Friends and Family,
It has been a while since our last update on Lauren and unfortunately, we have some sad news to share. Lauren’s leukemia is once again back. In November Lauren’s B cells returned. Early B cell return (prior to 6 months post CAR-T infusion) is an indication that Lauren’s CAR-T cells that were infused in August were no longer doing their job to attack her cancer. So, over Thanksgiving Lauren underwent a second infusion of her previously collected CAR-T cells. Unfortunately, this second infusion did not work. Her bone marrow tested positive for leukemia about 4 weeks ago. It has taken our family a little while to process everything and come to terms with the fact that we are now back in this fight. In March she will have been fighting this beast for 4 years with no more than a 10-week break from some kind of chemo. So that is the bad news.
Here’s the good news. Lauren still has treatment options and as of yesterday we have a new treatment plan. Lauren has been accepted into a CAR-T trial at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). This CAR-T is very similar to the CAR-T process that she has recently gone through at our home hospital in Florida, however, it is manufactured using a different protein. We are hopeful that this next path will lead to Laurens CURE. This last year has been the hardest year so far. Her immune system has been so low and since June she has needed at least weekly platelet transfusions and often twice a week. She has definitely not had any kind of ‘normal’ childhood like all parents want for their kids. Never once does she complain. If anyone deserves to whine about this situation it is Lauren and she doesn’t. She doesn’t complain about any of this. Ever. She really continues to amaze us and inspire us. She has been feeling really good and had good energy and it’s hard to believe her cancer is back.
Dave and Lauren and I will travel to Philadelphia this week and meet with the CAR-T team up there on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Lauren will have a temporary line placed in her leg to extract her T-cells and hopefully we can travel home on Thursday. We will head back up to Philadephia once her CAR T cells are ready to be infused. We just need her to stay infection free and to have her disease level stay as low as possible before we go back there. It has really been a bumpy hard road to get to this point. Despite these set-backs we continue to remain positive and HOPEFUL that our sweet Lauren will be cured and healed and get to enjoy more normalcy and make up for some lost time of just being a kid.
So our journey continues. We are so thankful that this trial is available and that Lauren will have this opportunity to be enrolled in it. Please keep our sweet girl in your thoughts this week as she undergoes her procedure and as we travel to and from Philadelphia. Thank you to my parents for stepping in to take good care of Leah while we are away. I hate the thought of being so far away from her but I know she is in really good hands. And also, thank you to all of our friends who have offered to help any way they can. It takes a village and we are so blessed to be so loved. Even if we don’t always reply to texts, calls, etc we read and appreciate all the support from near and far.
Xoxo,
Shawna
